Alphabet's Google has persuaded U.S. federal judge Amit Mehta to dismiss antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media Corporation, which alleged the search giant unlawfully used their content in AI-generated Overviews that draw readers away from their sites. In his September 30 ruling, Mehta said the publishers' claims 'fail to get out of the starting gate.'

The companies, which filed last year, argued Google broke antitrust law by forcing publishers to allow AI summaries of their content if they want to remain indexed in search, and said they lost revenue from reduced traffic. Mehta rejected that framing: 'Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an expectation that Google will send them search traffic if they make their content available for free. But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.'

Mehta said he was not 'unsympathetic' to publishers whose content Google repurposes without compensation, but ruled that antitrust law can't substitute for legislative action on how innovation causes economic harm. It is not a blanket ruling that every use of publisher content in AI search is lawful — and both dismissals reportedly came with prejudice as to the federal claims — but it signals that compensation for AI-Overview traffic losses will have to come from licensing deals or Congress, not the courts.